Red Dog at the Air Museum

Red Dog visited the Pensacola Naval Aviation Museum. While there he got to compare himself to a replica of Fat Man.

He was particularly interested in seeing the actual S3 Viking that his favorite president flew when he made the first ever carrier trap by a sitting president.

New Traditions

We have headed over to the Red Neck Riviera for Thanksgiving. Usually my wife cooks for the whole clan and they gather at our house. This week we are enjoying the coast. Yesterday we had a family visit to the Naval Air Museum in Pensacola. Its one of the best aircraft museums in the world, in my opinion. They had historical aircraft relating to Naval Aviation, including some from recent history such as the actual plane GW flew when he landed on the carrier to announce Mission Accomplished and the F-14 that flew the very last combat patrol flown by that type. The museum is huge and there is something for everyone.

Crisis in the Gulf

Boudreaux suddenly quit drinking, started taking baths, quit chasing women, quit his poker games and stopped laying around. He started cutting the grass around the church, even painted it and was faithful to be first to attend on Sundays!

Father Thibodeaux asked him what about dis wonderful change that had done overtook
him?

Boudreaux explained, ' I heard "Crisis in the Gulf" and if He's dat close, I wanna be good to go!

You Know You're Old When.....

A young engineer came into my office carrying something long and thin. "What's this and how does it work?", he asked.

That opened the opportunity for a teaching moment on the history and operation of the Slide Rule. He actually managed to get through 4 years of engineering school without learning what a slide rule was. The other grey hairs and silver backs gathered around and offered their personal experience with the care and feeding of their own slide rule.

If you were an engineering student, a slide rule was your constant companion. You had special stuff to lubricate it with and there were special adjustments to keep everything aligned and accurate. Everyone had their favorite material: Aluminum for durability and bamboo for dimensional stability. If Iran popped a nuke tomorrow and the EMP fried all the calculators in the city, you could still use a slide rule. It's sad to see them go the way of the buggy whip.

Lesson From History

My wife and I went to see Sarah's Key at the movies yesterday. The plot is based on the round up of Jews in Paris on July 16 - 17, 1942 and their internment in a bicycle race track stadium named Vel d'Hiv before being shipped to temporary camps in France before being shipped to Auschwitz. The story of a young girl picked up in the round up is researched by an American journalist who happens to living in the same apartment. Without giving anything away, its a great movie and leaves you haunted about a historical event that is not widely known.

I spent a little time researching it. While the Germans were behind the roundup, the Vichy government performed the arrests and the transport so that the entire thing appeared to the work of the French government. One thing struck me while reading the summary in Wikipedia: The French Jews turned themselves in!

After 1847, the census did not include information about religion. When the Germans occupied France, they directed all Jews to register. Many did and these files were the source of the information for the roundup. If the French Jews had ignored the directive, the Germans would not have had the information to arrest them!

Keep this in mind the next time your government wants information about you!

Head Count

The Sword Man was busy in Saudi Arabia last month. He removed the heads of some 20 folks. Mostly they were murderers with a rapist or two thrown in for good measure. A couple of them were women.

This brings the year to date total to 51, not including the poor sorcerer.